Hot BB

Here's a video interview with Big Peter from the Hot 8 on Boing Boing TV. Not much to say about it because it (er, literally) speaks for itself.

As kind of an aside, though, right next to the part I video on the website is an ad for Michael Ondaatje's book Coming Through Slaughter, which I recommend rather highly. It's a fictionalized account of Buddy Bolden, the legendary ur-cornetist of jazz. It's really thoughtfully done and kind of sucks you into its turn-of-the-century New Orleans world.

Interview Part I (with clips of the band playing What's My Name):


Interview Part II (with clips of the band playing Sexual Healing):

Halftime's Not Just for Halftime Anymore

I opened up the New York Times website this morning (yes, yes, I'm a hopelessly reactionary liberal metrosexual appeaser yuppie and I like my baguette with a little Camembert -- but I really think that Obama's going to change everything) to find this picture staring back at me from just below the masthead:
Well, I thought, brass has arrived!

And it's kind of true. At least in some places. This article is all about a summer camp program that Florida A&M University's Marching 100 has been organizing for the past 18 years, and it just about puts the last nail in the coffin of the complaint that Drumline was a totally crappy movie. (It was, if you really only care about things like plot, character development, and the nonexistence of hoary cliches.) The article itself really nails part of the reason why a program like this is a good thing for all of us:

[T]he rise of hip-hop and the computerized music programs like GarageBand has depleted the pool of young instrumentalists. In addition, many public schools have reduced or eliminated music classes to provide double periods of math and reading, which are tested annually under the education law No Child Left Behind.
[Links added]

Hallelujah! I mean, not like any of this is a big secret, but it's nice when it's prominently acknowledged by the Journal of Record.

This stuff is important partly because, as was pointed out in another recent post, teaching kids to play music often makes them better students in other areas, but also because (with all due respect*) marching band/drumline apparatus has a lot of advantages over the equipment that's usually used to create pop (as opposed to popular) music. Specifically (and incompletely): wind and percussion players don't need electricity, so they have a way easier time breaking down audience/band barriers than most rock bands do and they don't have to rely on the existence of clubs at all, if they don't want to; each band member's status as a producer of (essentially) one note/beat at a time at least points in the direction of a pretty egalitarian structure and group interdependency; the total absence of the cliches of the brooding guitar god and the charismatic lead singer.

More from the article:

The Marching 100 has created a revolution in band style, radically infusing the traditional catalog of songs and formations with the sounds and dances of black popular culture. “It slides, slithers, swivels, rotates, shakes, rocks and rolls,” the band’s founding director, Prof. William P. Foster, wrote in his memoirs. “It leaps to the sky, does triple twists, and drops to earth without a flaw, without missing either a beat or a step.”

Damn, I don't usually commit that many verbs in a day! Is it getting hot in here?

I do have one caveat about the Marching 100 and highly regimented bands like that in general, though. For kids who grow up in really unstable situations, that kind of military-style discipline and order might actually be a healthy thing (for a week, at least). Personally, I grew up with more "discipline" (read: adults with crazy control issues) than I knew what to do with, and by now I'm highly suspicious of people who really like being told what to do.

“They’re serious down here,” said L’Dante Brown, a 14-year-old drummer from the Virgin Islands. “When they tell you to stand still and be quiet, you can hear the mosquitoes flying.”

And when they tell Mr. Brown and the rest to move and make noise, and all the French horns and piccolos and saxophones and trombones sashay into action, the syncopated sound echoes across the hilly campus.

Remember, kiddies: obedience is not always the best response to an order.


* Maybe it's a non-issue, but I'd like to point out that I don't really have a problem with hip-hop or electronic music in general leading to fewer people playing horns today than 20 years ago, if in fact that's even the case. There's something pretty great about people with little or no musical experience having the capacity to create and manipulate whatever sounds they want in their own bedroom and then transmit what they've made halfway around the globe, if they want to. Actually, the growth of non-professionalism in music is part of what's so great about the spike in new brass bands that I see happening these days.

New radical band in L.A.!

A message from our Streetband list, which you can join by clicking on the link on the right side of the page -
There is a new band starting up in L.A.! Fantastic!

****

The FIRST DRUMCORE rad marching band has taken place.
We now have enough people to make a start and to start
seriously practicing, thinking about performances, etc.

Our NEXT PRACTICE is this sunday July 27th.
We will be meeting at Macarthur Park.
4p.m - 6/7.
We don't have a set spot where we meet.
It's wherever we can find shade on either side of the park.

If you want to be a part of this band.
PLEASE come to the next practice.
Help us make it happen.

REMEMBER
BRING water !
BRING marching drums or a pots, pans & sticks.
A strap for your drum.
Lots of enthusiasm.

& again no experience is neccessary ! All instruction provided.

Pass it on !

And THANKS AGAIN

Linda for L.A DRUMCORE

http://www.myspace.com/ladrumcore
drum-core (at) live.com

Second Line, Home and Away

Here's a couple of pretty good articles about two of the really great New Orleans-based brass bands today: Rebirth and the Hot 8. Rebirth, obviously, are kind of the pioneering superheroes of the modern second line bands. They started doing what they do more than 25 years ago when playing in a brass band just wasn't all that cool. If that has changed since then, it's largely because of them. Now snare player Derick Tabb, along with Trombone Shorty and several other brass band folks from the area, are starting up a program to teach elementary school kids how to play instruments.

It will draw students mainly from five Recovery School District elementary schools, which don't have marching band programs, and put them in summer music classes. During the 2008-09 school year, the students will attend after-school classes for three hours.

...

"I lost a little brother to gunfire, and Derrick has lost cousins," said Corey Henry, Rebirth's trombone player and a product of a Treme elementary school marching band.

Andrews said, "If we get them at the age Derrick is targeting, they'll also be getting a similar education as they would get at (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts), only they'll be starting younger."

...

Until the program finds more money, the teachers will volunteer their time, said Lawrence Rawlins, one of the instructors working with Tabb. Teaching students music can lead to them learning far more, [Pam] Breaux [assistant secretary of Louisiana's Office of Cultural Development] said.

"Take it a step at a time. You get a better student, you get better test scores," she said. "You get better test scores, you get more of an opportunity for higher education. You get better educated workers, you get a better work force for the state."

The Hot 8 always seemed like a kind of underdog in a city of underdogs. Until recently, they never seemed to get the recognition that they deserved (and maybe they still don't, tho there seem to be a lot of articles about them cropping up lately). And they've stuck it out through a nasty pile of hardship over the past few years, even by the rough standards of their home town

[T]he Hot 8 experienced its own private, yet sadly typical, tragedy in December 2006. Drummer Dinerral Shavers died, age 25, shot in the back of the head while driving his car.

...

[I]t's very hard to make a living on the local scene; venues aren't paying enough. "You want to work, because you want to play for your home crowd," he says. "We still do a lot of second-line parades and private parties. It just makes you want to do your own thing, free performances for the people."

This matters, of course, because New Orleans brass-band music is organically of its city and has always thrived on interplay outside, on the street, in the parades where folks perpetuate old dances and invent new ones. Separate the sound from the street and you stunt it, take away the point.

...

"We need to keep the music going," Pete says. "It don't make no sense to break up. I wanted to leave, I didn't want to play, I was tired. But I made a commitment to the other band members - and to the forefathers on whose shoulders we step."

Anyways, if you're not familiar with the background of the modern second-line bands, these pieces might give you a couple of hints about where they're coming from. And if you already know, then here's what two of the best are up to at the moment.

EARTHQUAAAAKE!!

I notice that What Cheer and Mucca Pazza are touring the West Coast at the same time.

Thisnthat

I promise to have a big ol' multi-record review coming up soon. But in the meantime, I would like to point out (for anyone in the greater-Seattle metropolitan area) that the Weapons of Marching Destruction (spawn of INB, grand-spawn of ¡Tchkung!) are looking for members. To wit:

Radical Marching Band Seeks Drummers and Brass Players.

Weapons of Marching Destruction, Seattle's loudest radical drumline is looking for collaborators. We need confident, competent drummers and brass players who are not afraid to play with some flair. Previous experience on your instrument required. Marching experience encouraged. BenjaminBearMusic@gmail.com

Instrument: Drums/percussion and Brass

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Beyond that, for your viewing pleasure, I give you some pretty well shot footage of Extra Action at a Halloween party a few years back. I like to amuse myself by trying to identify band members' faces (I see Josh and Wiley and Simon and Ena ... it's like a frickn episode of Romper Room).